Maria de los Angeles Torres is an associate professor of political
science at DePaul University in Chicago. Her book, In The Land of Mirrors:
Cuban Exile Politics in the United States will be published by University
of Michigan Press this fall. This is the first of two parts of her Cuban
journal. The second part will be published next Sunday.

Last March my great aunt Olga, who lived in Yaguajay, Cuba, died, leaving
her sister, Alicia, as the last remaining sibling of a large family. This
is the family with whom we spent Christmas and part of the summer when I
was young. We decided to visit her. I have always wanted my daughters to
have a connection to the island in which five generations of my relatives,
six for them, were born.

To go, I have to ask for permission to re-enter; my husband and
daughters need visas. In reality, we pay $400 for the application fees and
photos. We get ready for our trip; I find a 1950s Esso map of the island;
my father sends me one of Matanzas where he was born, marking places to
visit. My husband, Matt, brings home the June copy of Cigar Aficionado, it
features Cuba. I throw it in my backpack, along with Martin Cruz Smith's
Havana Bay.

June 14, O'Hare Airport: We go through Air Jamaica, thus avoiding the
charter flights whose passengers are harassed in Miami by U.S. Treasury
Department agents and in Havana by Cuban officials. Amazingly, we can
check our bags directly to Havana. Somehow that shortens the distance
between the city of my birth and the place I now live. Bad weather delays
our flight in Montego. Finally, we board and arrive in Havana at 4 p.m.

At the immigration checkpoint an official in a small booth will check
our documents. If they are in order, she will buzz the release lock of a
heavy metal door. One by one, we enter. Family units are not allowed to
enter together. I tell my daughters it will be OK.

We really can't stay at relatives. No room. We had paid for
reservations at el Hotel Comodoro in Havana. This is one of the few places
you can rent bungalows with two rooms. They try to give us a unit with
only one. After some discussion, the clerk begrudgingly ``does us a
favor'' and puts us in the right room. I think he was expecting a tip.

The photo of the pool area in the Cigar Aficionado does not show the
mold growing around the edge of the pool. And they are wrong about the
``friendly service.'' As far as this being the coolest place to stay, it
is simply an expensive bordello. Not a lot of street prostitutes here.
Word is they were arrested. Only government-controlled ones roam this
place. European businessmen set up their women in the bungalows -- the
large ones -- and pay the government for a certificate, swearing they
intend to get married. The government is the pimp.

At night, a magician charms my daughters with tricks, the sea breeze
cools the air. We will try to make the best of it.

June 15: I go walking down Quinta Avenida. I notice a boom in
construction. A corporate park is going up in Miramar. Here that means
half the buildings will be government offices. They are tearing down el
Museo del Pueblo Combatiente and building a Sofitel apartment hotel. The
museum was set up in the former Peruvian Embassy, once a private home, to
honor those who did not leave during the 1980 Mariel exodus. It began when
more than 10,000 people jammed the compound. The government is now selling
its own monuments.

Later we visit relatives in Havana. Three of their four children work
abroad. I hear stories of Cubans emigrating everywhere, anywhere. Cubans
applying for visas to live in Angola, even. We visit Old Havana. A United
Nations project has restored some of the old buildings. Benneton has set
up a store in one. The Cigar Aficionado photos are right, we walk through
the Hotel Santa Isabel and stop to look at the Rotunda inside El
Café del Oriente -- it is absolutely exquisite. But it's eerie; the
hotels and restaurants are empty.

They are now working on the Malecon's facade. I wonder if, after the
restorations, Havana will look like it did in 1959. What will happen to
the people who live in these crumbling old buildings? What will history do
with the 40 years that have passed?

We eat at a wonderful private restaurant, La Cocina de Lilliam
(recommended by friends and Cigar Aficionado), one of the few permitted to
operate. What the magazine doesn't say is that this is deja vu. In 1993,
there were private restaurants throughout the island. After a year they
were abruptly shut down since they were effectively competing with
state-owned restaurants. It's all so precarious.

June 16: A new crackdown has left independent taxi drivers unemployed.
We rent an official car with a driver. After a while, he warms up and
asks, ``Do you have any information about what happened to Robertico
Robaina?'' (The boy wonder promoted to Minister of Foreign Relations
several years ago and purportedly now under house arrest.) He tells us,
``What bothers me the most about this government is that they tell us
nothing. I have to try to piece together things by what tourists tell
me.''

My husband wonders what would happen in the United States if all of a
sudden Madeleine Albright was arrested and held incommunicado and no one
was told anything. I wonder, how can American civil libertarians still be
enamored with this government?

We drive out to Pinar del Rio, to Viñales and Soroa. I want my
daughters to have memories of the island's physical beauty. My husband,
who smokes an occasional cigar, wants to see a cigar factory. The
photographs in Cigar Aficionado are tempting. After hassling with the
doorman who was trying to charge us $10 a head, twice as much as what they
were charging organized tours, we settle for $6, a modest multa
(literally, a fine; colloquially, money stolen from tourists).

What we find inside breaks my heart. Workers, mainly women, rolling
cigars and begging for quarters and gum. They are not smiling like the
ones in the magazine photos. Yes, it's true Cuba does not have beggars in
the streets like other Latin American countries. Cuba's also work 50 hours
a week. I cry. I know how proud cigar workers have always been. At the
turn of the century, they were the elite of Cuba's working class, better
organized, better paid and cultured. They would pay to have literature and
newspapers read to them while they worked. How could they have been better
off 100 years ago? I'm not sure how to make the best of our trip.